


Here's to you, Cathy Dollanganger.

by bluebeardsbride



Category: Flowers in the Attic - V. C. Andrews, Stand By Me (1986), The Body - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21763246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeardsbride/pseuds/bluebeardsbride
Summary: Her name would appear on binders, note pages, even homework, an abundance of Cathy, Cathy, Cathy.  Like if we repeated her name three times she'd appear and offer her secrets to us.
Relationships: Chris Chambers/Cathy Dollanganger, Chris Chambers/Teddy Duchamp/Gordie LaChance/Vern Tessio, Gordie LaChance/Cathy Dollanganger
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Here's to you, Cathy Dollanganger.

I

Cathy Dollanganger was almost a mythic figure to us. A transparent blur of milk skin and yellow hair. She was here and there but nowhere somehow she managed to trickle into our adolescence like a puss seeping from a wound. Her name would appear on binders, note pages, even homework, an abundance of _Cathy, Cathy, Cathy._ Like if we repeated her name three times she'd appear and offer her secrets to us. The four of us, when we were still young, had bickered over what was what and who she truly was under her milksop flesh and deeper than her pinky insides, she called to us, I used to say. She wanted us to help her, but how could we have known then.

Chris says I talked too much like a writer. If Cathy wanted help, she would have asked for help. She wasn't like the other girls who glanced teary-eyed over silk handkerchiefs or like girls who batted eyes at you over their boyfriend's shoulders if she wanted something she would have asked directly. She was just like _that_ , he insisted.

“Like what?” I asked, The cigarette danged from my long fingers, smoke drifting from the embers, burning the insides of my nostrils. For a brief moment, I wondered if Cathy smoked and if she did, what kinds did she burn, and, what kinds made her sick with a headache.

Chris studied his hand of cards before answering, rolling and unrolling his shoulders. “Sad,” he said, at last, flipping down a queen to mount my king. “you can't help the sadness in people. Maybe we see what we want in her sadness, that's selfish, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” I flicked my ashes. “that is selfish. Why do you think she acts the way she does?” I couldn't help but be drawn back to Cathy as a subject. Maybe it was because I was a writer I was able to see people in a different way. Cathy was an inspiration, something I wanted to peel back and understand, why did she wear her hair that way, why did she stick gum into Cindy Greendale's hair in the gym? I wanted to understand her on a deep level that I couldn't describe.

“Maybe you're in love with her,” Chris took a card from the pile. I looked for the smile in his voice or a hint of taunting, but he was serious.

“No.” It wasn't a possibility for me. Had I been even an ounce in love with Cathy Dollanganger, I wouldn't picture her as a specimen on a table, waiting to be studied. Like the frog we cut open and pinned back in sixth grade, or a corpse on the embalming table, waiting to be cleaned from the inside out.

“Maybe,” Teddy chipped in. between tossing and catching the baseball he swiped from some kid. “Maybe you want to screw her. Don't have to love someone to screw'em.”

Again, No, I insisted. Usually, people wanted to screw people, not specimens. When I pictured her, I saw skin pulled over ballerina's bones, I saw a lead in a novella, it occurred to me much later in life that I saw Cathy's being as an idea. She wasn't a person to me but a mystery I could solve like the ones I read about. I didn't love her, I didn't want to screw her, I wanted to solve her.

“She's interesting. Don't you wonder about her?” I pushed out my smoke. Twisting and deforming it the same way it was doing to my lungs. “The things she does, doesn't that interest you?”

For instants, I reminded them how Cathy had once crossed the lunchroom to Priscilla Ambergris with a carton of strawberry milk, only to splash the whole thing down her white dress.

“Yeah, yeah!” Chris interrupted. “I remember that Priscilla lunged at her and the two ended up on the lunchroom floor. Cathy even elbowed Mrs. Debroux when she tried to pull them apart. Didn't the gym teacher have to pull them apart?”

“Hey,” Vern spoke up, finally. He'd been busy trying to rewire his yoyo with disappointing results. “I was there. It was Mr. Waterson and the lunch man, he had to grab her legs. She has long legs.”

That must have been a sight. Cathy was all elbows and knees. Ganguly ballerina limbs. “I wonder what set her off,” I muttered, folding. I had long since lost the card game.

"She's something.” Chris laughed. “She's really something.” That's all he said. I dropped the subject of Cathy for the night. But her spell had already been cast over the four of us, we had sliced open a wound and now we had to deal with what oozed out.

That night I put the idea that maybe I was in love with Cathy to the test. I replaced the usual girly dreams I thought about at night with her. It was no good, I tried to imagine her naked but the image that came to mind was her opened up like a frog on a slab, I hovered over her and she was, very much alive. Her insides were black, like a pit, like I could reach inside forever – but she was smiling at me.

“Hi Gordie,” she said. Her voice was blurry like she was talking through a telephone someone else was holding up to my ear.

“Hi Cathy,” I said.

“Well,” she said. “Did you figure it out?”

“Figure what out?” I asked, I tried to reach into her hollow pit of a stomach, but she giggled when I tried and that, of all things, disturbed me.

Suddenly, she sat up. The long flaps of skin that had been opened like bird-wings now hung limply over her pit, which had started to ooze out blood. Cathy didn't seem to mind as it pooled on the medical slab.

“Me,” she said. “Figure me out yet, Dick Tracy?”

I woke to my alarm the next morning. I decided it was best not to tell the others about my dream. I didn't even want to think more about it. The cool, dampness of the bus window helped the pounding in my temples but it made me think of the medical slab. I didn't even notice when Chris had joined me, it was almost like he had appeared out of the morning mist.

“Gordo, you look like hell.” He held out a cigarette. “You sick, man?”

I palmed it. This would get me through history and probably a little of the advanced math class before lunch. “No. I had a dream about Cathy Dollanganger last night.”

He looked at me for a moment, something of a mix of concern and jealousy. “Torture man.” he slid his own smoke between his lips. “What happened?”

“Nothing, It was a nightmare. She was cut open on a medical table, I think I was the one who did it. She was still alive and she talked to me.”

“What did she say?” Chris leaned closer to me. Something in his eyes told me that he didn't think I was blown or lying, I knew at that moment he was under the same spell I was. He was hoping that somehow Cathy had come to me in some shared connection in our dreams to tell me what only the girls knew.

“She called me Dick Tracy and then, she bled.”

II

Chris was the one who would be in the first period with her. Chambers, Dollanganger. Their lockers were even carved into the same wall. He was always encased in her essence, a strand of her blond hair stuck to a holiday sticker left on his locker to peel and rot, once a bobby-pin that fell loose from her hair managed to hook itself onto his bootlace accompanied by another strand of hair. ( We had all deduced that it was, in fact, Cathy's by watching the others who lined the wall. Sue-Ellen had brown hair, Stu Allen was a boy, Velma Doughty had a black Japanese style-bob. )

“What does she do,” Vern asked. “Does she act up in class?”

“No,” Chris said. “She acts like everyone else.”

“What do you see,” I asked.

“Her back.” Chris answered. “her face when she passes back papers. She doesn't talk to me anymore.”

_Anymore._ One summer, a million years ago, Cathy had been our friend. She talked to us all once, she didn't have secrets then – she was only a kid. She was barely a girl to us then but thinking back now, she was just as reclusive and mythic as she is now. Who was she then and what happened in-between first periods and training bras that made the change in her, something about her made it seem like she knew more than us and always would, but we wanted to know everything.

Just like she appeared between us in the halls, the lunch line, Cathy Dollanganger appeared in our childhood just the same. We all took to swimming in Skinner Lake, the teens had long since left it behind with their litters of beer carcasses and moldy cigarette butts. The rumor was that someone had drowned in the lake, jumped from the peak above with stones in their pockets and sank to the bottom, it was dragged and poked- but nobody ever surfaced. Still, it was enough to drive everyone who partied there to newer, deeper lakes. We all considered ourselves brave for still going there, deep diving from the peak and watching the marbling water for bones and, the jumper.

Day Zero, as we took to calling it, we all arrived later than usual at the lake. Just after church, part-time jobs, and tormenting older sibling. It was the hottest day of the year and there was nothing we wanted more than to submerge ourselves just as deep as we could. It was Vern who stopped us, as he peered, wide-eyed over the peak. We heard the soft splashes but no voices.

“Its a ghost,” Vern insisted. “They never found the bones and now it wants ours.”

We took turns peering from the edge. But in our fear we only peeked in and out, bobbing back and forth, making out the faint outline of a bare-foot, a swinging, pale arm. Whatever it was swam but never spoke.

“Well,” Chris muttered. “Let's go down. Then we can see who or what it is.”

“Not me,” Vern said. “I don't want to see.” but he followed us down anyway.

The figure didn't see us as we stood on the water's edge. It's tranquility disturbed us. Floating, gently bobbing with the slight waves. It's gold hair fanned out like a stringy, stretched out halo. We all had our own ideas and in a fumble, we all let them out at once.

An angel.

A ghost, Sincerely.

No, a mermaid. ( How could it be a mermaid, Teddy? It has legs. )

“Whatever it is,” Chris said. “It better get used to sharing. This is our waterhole too.” Then, he fumbled off his shoes and shirt and cannonballed himself into the water. Only then did the figure let out a screech, bobbing under the waves. When Chris resurfaced, the figure did as well and we all thought it was going to drag him under.

“You're only a girl,” Chris said. ( which he told us later. )

“You're a creep,” The girl said. “My names Cathy.” ( The order may have been reversed. ) Then she crawled out of the water, hair like a rope stuck around her neck in golden strands. She turned to look at the rest of us, her eyes struck me. They looked transparent, febrile like she was feverish with some gold-rush era sickness, her veins were visible, blue, cress-crossing around her arms and legs like blue strings. Then, we paid little attention to her ill-fitting dress, too taken in by her swan limbs and the eerie, sickly look she had. The dress was actually a woman's night slip, which Cathy didn't fill and if memories served it reveled her chest, ( which we cared nothing for, she looked like the rest of us, at that point. ) the hem stuck to her red knees and the straps hung loosely from her arms, then she turned from us and disappeared down the overgrown path.

“She had bruises.” Chris lit his cigarette.

“What,” I asked, miles away. “Where?”

“Bruises,” he said again. “On her back, black and purple bruises. She had one of those open-backed dresses, you know? I saw them.”

I wish Chris was able to take a photo or somehow implant what he saw into the rest of our minds, so we could examine the ruptured blood vessels together.

“Maybe she likes to be on her back,” Teddy laughed. “Don't most blondes?”

“Maybe she fell,” Vern said. “Isn't she a cheerleader?” ( She was a ballerina, but Vern couldn't tell the difference. )

“She didn't fall, man,” Chris told me after the others left. “I know bruises.”

I didn't argue. “What do you think happened?”

He only shook his head. “Who knows.” he kept shaking his head when he said, “but if I find out who it was, I'm kicking his ass.”

We had an assembly the next day. Everyone piled into the gym like animals being packed into a barn. The whole place smelled like a beaver's den, bad breath, sockless feet crammed into sneakers, the gym itself always smelt wet. ( The school's pool was leaking, it had been leaking for years. Up in the rafters boys had tossed unwashed jockstraps and socks, the heat didn't help. ) Me, Chris, Teddy, and Vern piled together on the last stand in the bleachers, swapping bagged lunches, cigarette butts and insults.

“I just came to see the cheerleaders,” Teddy said. “I'm slipping out right after.”

“How,” one of the DeSpain twins asked. They crammed themselves in front of us, “Teddy you can't see three feet in front of your face.” John and Marty's father John Martin stormed the beaches with Teddy's father, or so they all said. They were identical, black-haired, gray-eyed, twins. Their mother was a Jew, something our parents hissed to each other over dinner, in the church parking lot. It was like she was another mythical creature, she did the ice-cream stand every year at the fair, I remember looking at for the first time after learning about her jew-condition. ( Which wasn't a condition at all, but you'd never know from the way our mothers looked and spoke about the DeSpains. ) She looked like any other mom, I thought. The only thing that was different was the star that dangled in place of a cross.

“Up yours, Marty.” Teddy shoved him with the blunt of his heel.

“I'm John,” the shoved in question laughed.

“Up yours too.”

Our laughter faded to the sound of the band. From our perch we could see all the teachers mingling, tucking their flakes back into secret jacket pockets, the school principal was feeling up the young new nurse, a couple of kids got caught smoking and were being escorted out. I didn't want to watch the cheerleaders, I wanted to go to lunch. Mom was out with her friends, another concert this time it was a few towns over vs Boston. When mom was away from the kitchen closed down, dad grabbed food on the way home from work and I was left to fend for myself.

“Hey,” Chris poked me, “Hey look.”

“Hey yourself, what is it?”

Chris pointed, the way you pointed when you don't want to be noticed. “ The middle of the aisle, look.”

I did look. No one else had noticed her, maybe not even her friends. Cathy had a knack of appearing out of thin air, she wasn't looking at us but down at the band. Her hair was pulled to the top of her head in a tight bun, she was wearing her ballet get-up, something she usually did when she had classes after school, ( no tutu – she stopped wearing that in grammar school. Replaced with black or jean shorts. )

“Think she's going to pull a stunt?” Chris asked.

“That would be more interesting than this,” I muttered.

Cathy didn't, in the end, pull a stunt. ( much to our displeasure. ) she did turn to us just as the football team was making their entrance into the gym. I felt Chris suck in his breath next to me the same way I did. by this time the rest of the gang locked eyes on her.

“What's she doing?” Teddy asked.

“She's freaky,” One or both of the twins muttered.

“She's coming this way!” Vern said and then, shuffled from his spot next to Chris and jammed himself next to Teddy.

For once, Vern was right. Cathy floated her way to the back of the stands. She saw us staring, I thought. She's gonna give us hell. But she didn't, she stood at the end of the bleacher, looking at us all crammed together, like rabbits in a cage, then back to the gym floor.

“Let me sit,” she spoke. Demanded was more like it. She wasn't looking at us but her voice unlocked the breath we'd all been holding, simultaneously.

“We don't own the bleacher, doll,” John answered. “Sit where ever you want, just don't tell about our smoke.”

“Can I sit, Chris?” Cathy asked again.

For a moment, Chris stuttered. “Yeah..yeah you can sit where ever you want, Cathy.” ( Chambers, Chris told me later. She hasn't called me Chris in years, it's been Chambers since the start of Jr High. )

I thought she'd just sit next to me in the empty space but she didn't. She used me as a steady to get over into the tight squeeze next to Chris and the wall. Her warm palm bled through my tee-shirt and imprinted on my shoulder. Legs brushing mine as she moved, ( Teddy said her knees had stabbed his back, he called them “knobby.” )

Chris looked just as mesmerized when she stepped over him. ( instead of his shoulder, Cathy grabbed a hold of his knee, there was a rip in his jeans and for a brief moment it was skin on skin contact. Chris said it felt different when I asked what he meant he just shrugged and said, He just never felt what he felt at that moment before. )

“Thanks,” Cathy muttered. “I hate assemblies.”

“I thought you were a cheerleader, Cathy.” Vern said, “Aren't you?”

“Ballet, Vern,” Cathy told him. “I do ballet. It's different.”

“Look Doll,” Marty reached back and slapped her knee. “Isn't that your brother?”

Cathy's brother, Christopher was a linebacker on the football team and catcher when baseball was in season. He and Cathy looked like twins, but Cathy hated her brother. ( In return, we thought Christopher hated her too. ) He hung around Eyeball Chambers and Ace when he wasn't playing the good son for the public.

“Who cares,” Cathy shook his hand away. “Fuck him.” but she lunged forward anyway, using Teddy and Marty as pillars to hold her up. One of her long legs wrapped itself around Chris's', she was so comfortable around us like she didn't pick up and ditch us for more popular friends. She sank back down in her seat without another word.

“What are you doing back here, Cathy,” Chris asked. “Why aren't you with your friends?”

I straightened up, “Yeah,” I backed up weakly. “Why aren't you?” I couldn't look at her for too long without thinking about my dream. The pink leotard going down into her black shirts only made me feel sick.

“Fuck them too,” she whispered. Not looking at us. “Who cares.” In the dimness of the gym and the shifting sunlight – her eyes looked like they reflected and glowed. They looked watery like she was going to cry.

“Are you okay, Cathy?” I blurted. We all knew girls treated other girls like wind treated leaves in the trees. They fought, got into scats, then the next day they'd be swapping earrings and braiding each other's hair. Her presence changed us, momentary, she shifted the world around us, like her weight had titled our center of gravity.

“Yeah,” She spoke softly. “I'm fine, thank you for asking,” she mumbled the last bit and Chris told me later she had said it at all.

She spent the rest of the assembly in silence. We did too, it was like she was shifting our behavior. We didn't want to upset her, we wanted her to tell us everything, she finalized her spell over us. When it was time to pile out of the gym, before Chris got up Cathy pressed herself against him, cupping a hand around his ear – then she brushed passed us and slid into the crowd.

“What she say, man?” Teddy asked.

“Are you blind?” John laughed. “She kissed him.”

“Did she, Chris?” Vern asked, “Did she kiss you?”

Chris had a faint color to his cheeks and, momentary, his eyes looked glazed over. “No,” he said finally. “She didn't kiss me. She just said....” We all, with the exception of the twins who were hopping over stands racing to the bottom, leaned closer to him. “She just said she was really sorry.”

“About what,” Teddy asked.

“About what happened in grammar school?” I offered. We all hoped for a peek into what she kept hidden but now she just heaped more mysteries onto our pile.

“Maybe,” Chris said. “I don't know.”

The next morning it was raining but I and Chris still met up to study like we usually did. The dripping against my kitchen window was calming. It fit with the quietness of my house, mom was out, dad was out. Denny was dead. ( It alarmed me that I was more invested in a girl I barely knew than my own brother's death. Maybe this was my way of coping. )

“I had a dream about her,” Chris muttered. Between the pages of the book and eraser shavings. A breeze came in and dusted us with rain.

“Torture man.” I closed the window. “What happened.”

“I was swimming in Skinner lake,” He twisted his pencil into the paper. Drilling the sharp point down. “Then, I turned and she was there. Not naked, not smiling, not talking. Not even fully out of the water, just her eyes – looking at me. No bubbles in the water under her nose, no ripples – nothing.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I tried to touch her, talk to her. I reached under where her body should be but nothing was there. She followed me with her eyes, it was more like a nightmare. Her eyes were milky white, like a dead body.”

“She's haunting us.” I noticed that Chris had doodled her name on the side of the paper.

Chris blew his smoke out of the corner of his lips. “Yeah, and we're letting her.” he erased her name but it already set into the paper.

III

In the fall, during our holiday break, I decided to start tutoring for some extra cash. My parents didn't know but I doubted they'd care if I told them. They paid little attention to what I did even more as I grew older. At sixteen, to them, I was an adult able to care for myself. I was no Denny and would never be so like all his things now packed away in the attic, they packed me too. I drifted around my house and my parents treated me like a border. Sometimes, at night, I'd run into one of them and they'd stare at me a little longer than they should, trying to remember who I was and what I was doing there. I wasn't Dennis, so who was I?

There was a distasteful bitterness that grew in me, like an evil twin inside me, I must have swallowed in the womb. Sometimes I thought awful things that shocked me. Usually, they were about my parents, about Denny. Maybe I was destined to grow into a deeply troubled adult, maybe I would hold onto this bitterness forever. Maybe it was handed down from my father, from his father and his father before him, maybe I would hand it over to my son someday. Maybe I'd only have daughters.

My dad was back in his chair and didn't look up when I drifted passed him. I could have tossed the apple core in my hands at him and he'd look right passed me and tell my mother later that the house was haunted. I thought I heard him mumble _Door,_ but that might have been my overactive imagination.

I expected a tutorie, some days kids just showed up from seeing my flyer taped to the bulletin board at our local church and I never knew who they would be. Sometimes mothers came with a handful of change or five dollars. I opened the door and stared, unblinking, thinking back to Chris's description of the milky dead eyes of Cathy Dollanganger, thinking back to her watery transparent eyes in the gym, to her wide and very much alive eyes now.

“Cathy?” I hadn't seen her since the assembly. We hadn't talked about her since Chris brought up his dream, It was almost like she knew her spell was fading and she needed to rewind her siren call to draw us all back in. like she was an urban legend that needed the constant buzz about her or else she'd fade away forever.

“Hi, Gordie, can I come in. It's raining.” there was a duffle bag at her feet and it looked like she came from a ballet lesson. She had a baggy sweater on that covered must of the getup, but the pink leggings gave her away. “My brother didn't pick me up.” she went on, “would it be okay if I used your phone?”

“Gordon,” my dad called, “close the door. You're letting in a draft.”

Suddenly, I felt very adult but I didn't know why. “Yeah. Come in, if your shoes are wet, please leave them by the door. My mom's a real bitch about wet floors.”

Cathy slipped into my house like a draft. She slid out of her sopping sneakers and walked bare-footed around my house. That seemed very personal to me. She asked if it was alright if she also left her bag, I told her that was fine and directed her to the phone.

We had one phone, mom talked about getting another one – because all the ladies had two phones now, dad said he'd think about it. It hung in our kitchen, next to the fridge and backdoor, a fade squash yellow. I hung back a little, standing in our stairway, I could only make out a little of what she was saying.

_“Mom- he did it again-I'm at a friends- No, I can't stay over-”_ ( the idea of her sleeping in my house made the pit in my stomach burn. Not sleeping with me or in my bed, just the idea of her doing mundane things In my home, made me _warm_. )

My father found me, holding his paper at his waist he asked, “Whom is on the phone?”

I said, “A friend.”

“A girlfriend?” He sounded...almost entertained. It was the most emotion I ever heard from him.

“Just a friend, dad.”

He looked at me for a long time. Like he finally figured out who I was. Not a son, but as a man, he could talk too about men things. Which seemed fair, I never saw him much as a father. But, it was almost like a right-of-passage had finally passed, overnight I was maybe someone he'd try to talk too, maybe make that fishing trip sometime.

Cathy rounded the corner and I felt my dad jab me in the ribs. A man to man way of signaling approval. She looked uneasy, her cheeks darkened with embarrassment and it gave her a haunting look, only akin to the drowned, sickly look she had as a kid.

“Hi.” she spoke to her toes, “I'm really sorry about intruding, Mr. LaChance. I missed my ride home from ballet class. Would it be alright if I waited on the porch until the rain stopped?”

“Well, sweetheart, it's alright if you waited in here.” he looked at me, “what's your name, honey?”

“Catherine Dollanganger, you might know my dad.”

His hand clamped down on my shoulder and shook me a bit. The Dollangangers were a well-off family. Her dad was a PR man for some company in the city. “Goodman. Does your brother play football? I see his name in the paper sometimes.”

“Yes, sir. I'm not sure what position, sir.”

He nodded. “Well then. I'll leave you kids alone,” he shifted his paper and disappeared back to his chair.

Somehow, between the beating of my heart and the uneasiness of my stomach, I realized I sat myself down at the table, overwhelmingly aware of how cold the faded wood was against my palms or how rough the splintery chair legs were against my exposed ankles. I was also overwhelmingly aware of the fact that Cathy was across from me, her bare feet were against my floor, her eyes were drinking in everything in my house; just like Chris at the lockers, her effluvia would be encased in my home forever.

( After her departure, I'd find fragments of her all over. She twisted her finger in our phone cord, nail-polish staining it until we got it replaced in the 70s. A forlorn bandaid that was still spotty with blood from her ballet class, she was like a patchwork doll that fell apart at every turn. )

“Gordon,” she spoke between chewing her nails. “you're parents don't call you Gordie?”

“No, they, uh, they called my brother by his full name too.” They would never shame him, postmortem, by calling him anything else.

“I forgot you had a brother.”

So do I, sometimes. “He died a long time ago, it's okay.”

“I wish my brother would die,” she muttered. Still not looking at me, probably studying the photo of Denny behind my on the wall. Photos of me were scares, mostly on the mantel in the living room.

“What?” I asked, I knew I heard her but I wondered if she'd say it again.

“I wish there wasn't a cloud in the sky. So I could walk home.”

Was the ticking of the clock always so loud? “Do you want to see Denny's room?” I didn't realize I spoke. The voice didn't sound like me, the gesture didn't seem like me. Denny's room was a shrine from my parents, personal, deeply personal. Trivial things have been booted to the attic, school books, winter clothes, but everything was the same as the day he died. Even the shoe he knocked over reminded unmoved by time.

“Sure.” Cathy looked tranquil. Like the day we found her in the lake. She wasn't off-put or bothered by the idea of invading my brother's tomb. Like always, in her own morbid way, she understood the offer deeper than I did. It was like a death march to the second story. The stairs barely made a noise under her feet, a ghost was entering a dead boys crypt.

Denny's door opened like it was used every day. ( sometimes I saw dad greasing the hinges. ) his room was still, filed under a thin layer of dust. ( mom couldn't bear to be in there, even to clean it. ) and the curtains were drawn, it made me think that Denny wasn't actually dead – only sick and mom drew them closed to help him nurse his headache and he'd rise from the bed and knock me for bringing a girl into his room. But I knew better. The room was as dead as he was.

She glided passed me like she was drawn to something I wasn't. “Does it still smell like him?” she asked.

“What,” I asked, then smelled. To me, it smelt like dust and wood, the stench of slightly dirty clothes faded into a stale odor that I now associated with Denny. I couldn't remember what he smelt like anymore. “No, I don't think so.”

“Do you miss him?”

“No. Do you think that's awful?” I never told anyone that I rarely missed my brother. Even to this day, I think she might have been the only one. I looked her in the eyes when I said it, looking to see if she'd judge me from the inside – but her eyes never changed. Transparent and understanding, she drank me in like she understood the awfulness deep inside me, that parasitic twin I swallowed.

“No. you said it was a long time ago. I wouldn't miss my older brother. I'd miss Cory like crazy, though.” her answer was steady and indifferent. Honest. Then she glided over to the bed and sat down, dust drifting up from the unchanged sheets, it didn't even groan under her weight. Then she swung her legs up and draped herself across his bed, setting dust off and violating the unused bed with her presence.

It didn't bother me that she disturbed the bed I thought that maybe it should, maybe I should have told her not to touch anything but I didn't. I only watched her, there was no meanness in her movements, she didn't do anything rude, in her own way I think she was trying to honor my brother's memory.

“Why wouldn't you miss Christopher?” I had to ask. Only a few people knew about the animosity between the Dollanganger siblings. Something was wrong between them, something bitter, something evil. I knew he had something to do with the bruises Chris saw on her back, I knew her hatred was thick and hot for a reason.

“Because I hate him,” she folded her hands over her belly. “Do you mind if I take this sweater off? It's warm in here.”

“I don't mind. Why do you hate him?” I paddled along the floor, tentative. Trying not to creak the wood, alert my father. I skirted out the old desk chair and sat adjacent to her. I tried to flick the light on, ready to disturb the deafness of the room but the bulb had burned out. We were set up like a mock therapy session, an eerier echo to my dream. _Figure me out yet, Dick Tracy?_

Cathy slid out of the baggy sweater with ease dumping it in a heap on the floor. The only spot that would ever be cleaned again. She settled down again, flinging one skinny arm over the edge of the bed. “Mom likes him best. It's shit.”

“My parents liked Denny best.” Was I doing my older brother an injustice? By allowing my bitterness out in his own room? What had he done to me, except, be born first and be born best? As an adult I knew it was symbolic, it was good for me to do that in his room; Cathy, allowing me to open my stomach and spill out the bitterness, the jealousy like thick tar, was almost a carnal angel. Someone who wouldn't foil at the sight of my eaten twin after he dumped out of me – looking back, I realized that I thought she was the only one I could confess too. Now, I think I should pencil in a therapy session.

Cathy said, “It's shit. My mom has three other kids but it's like we're not there. You know I had to do the bake sale for Carrie? She cried all night because mom forgot and I spent all morning trying to make a fucking cake.”

“It is shit. It's like I'm invisible. Even now they wouldn't notice If I left.” She opened a flood-gate in me. She was my confessional. “I think they hate me,” I said at last. It left my lips like a prayer, it made me feel clean, good. Like I'd been holding onto this forever. Only once did I confess this before, the summer of Ray Browers. Chris wanted to make me feel accepted, loved, he wanted me to feel good and whole. Cathy would allow me to be bitter, it's like she ate it up and kept it all in her dark heart of hearts, the one made of blood and tar. It made me wonder if Chris, Cathy and I were all stitched together with the same string. I saw us three as paper men, held together with bloody seams.

“My parents hate me too,” Cathy echoed. “Everyone hates me.” she rubbed her feet against the blanket. She lounged in the bed like it was her own while I sat, straight-backed in his wooden chair like it would swallow me up if I dared to relax.

“Why do you think they hate you?”

“Because,” she said, then swallowed. “they hurt me.” the words left her and bounced around the room, off the windows and finally landed in my head. _They hurt me._ The bruises, the hatred. _They hurt me, they hurt me they hurt me-_

Downstairs a door opened, then closed. “Whose bag is this? Whose bag is this?” my mother's voice drifted. “Do we have company?” a muffled voice that must have been my father answered. _Gordon's got a friend over, must be upstairs._ Shuffling of bags, some creaks of wood. I thought for a moment she'd come up – but she didn't, I was already forgotten.

“We should go,” I said. “they'll be pissed if they see us in here.”

Cathy was already sitting up gathering her sweater. “I want to see your room.”

I said, “Okay.” suddenly eager to get out of Denny's crypt. “Cathy? I don't hate you. Neither does Chris, or Teddy or Vern. We don't hate you.”

She was hovering by the open doorway, the hall light peaking in made me see her as if for the first time. Sometimes while she was lounging on the bed she took her hair down and it fell wildly around her head, it hit an angle just right on her to give her a ghastly halo. She stepped back toward me and I thought, for a moment, she might hit me. She was known to do things like that, but she didn't. She placed a warm hand on my shoulder, the same place she imprinted the last time, it was like she knew where to place her hand. Then, she kissed me. It wasn't electric, it wasn't romantic. No tongue, no groping in the dark, just a kiss. She smelt like rain and her lips tasted like dust, it was my first kiss.

“Thanks, Gordie. What room is yours?”

“Three doors down.”

After, she didn't stay long. She drank my room in much like she did the kitchen, _( You like baseball? - No, my brother played, he gave me that hat. - Oh. )_ She sat on my bed, I never noticed how pretty she was. ( she left her ponytail on my bed. I think I still have it wrapped around something. )

“Do you still go to the treehouse?” she asked, eyeing some tablets I left open on my desk. Early manuscripts.

I said, “Sometimes. Not in a while. We hang out mostly on the edge of town now. If you see us together, we can show you.” I studied her in the light. Without her sweater on I saw more faint marks on her arms and one mark on her neck I knew wasn't a bruise. Something in my stomach lurched. _They Hurt Me._

I sat next to her on the bed, she was pulling her sweater back down. “Cathy-”

“Oh,” a voice echoed. My mother in the open doorway, “Oh. You're father said....oh.” then she disappeared back down the stairs.

“I should go. I'll see you at school.” Cathy said. “The rain's letting up.” ( it had, but not nearly enough to walk in.)

“Okay. I'll walk you out.” _Figure me out yet?_ I think I was starting too.

My parents were perched in the living room. My mom craning her neck to watch us in the doorway. In a selfish way, I didn't want Cathy to leave. My parents only cared to remember me when I had someone over and she was the only one of approval in years. They thought we had tried, but not succeeded in sleeping together and probably still do. A part of me wondered if they hoped we had and some shotgun wedding would happen and they'd have a rich daughter – in – law and grandson to help expenses around the house.

“I'm sorry if I get you in trouble. Swear not to hate me?”

“I swear. I won't. See you at school.”

“Ok. Bye, Gordie.”

I didn't get in any trouble in the end. I thought the incident would pass untalked about. Things are never that simple. After dinner, my parents retired to the living room and as I passed I heard them talking, ( _He's a growing boy, almost a man. He should know. - If he was doing what you think, he does know. - Talk to him._ )

I laid on my bed. ( which is when I found the forgotten hair elastic. Absent-minded I fiddled with it. ) My father came to the door, knocked and entered after I gave the okay. I thought he'd give me a real talk, something about me, talk about what happened, instead, he started, “I remember giving Dennis this talk. You have the same taste in girls I think.”

My eyes glazed over.

Years later, my first published story, “Stud City,” echoed a lot of what happened. It had too much Castle Rock in it, too much Denny, too much Cathy. The idea of defiling a dead siblings' room came directly from that experience. Here's to you, Cathy Dollanganger.

IIII.

I told the others about Cathy appearing out of thin air on my doorstep but only Chris about what really happened. Out of the four of us, only Chris really understood the deep infatuation. Maybe because he had a apart of her contagion too, Vern and Teddy thought she was pretty, Chris and I understood she was one of us – in her own way.

“Should we tell someone?” I started. “I mean, we both saw the bruises. She told me.”

Chris scrunched his face up. “I don't know. “ he kept saying, “I don't know, man.” Chris barked for his brother and his father. Everyone knew but no one did anything. No one but us knew about Cathy and even then, in our youth, we knew it was bad. Cathy was a rich kid, a pretty girl, someone would help her, right? We both wanted too – but how could we? My parents would hide their faces, insist it wasn't their business. Chris's parents wouldn't care.

I said, “A teacher? The cops?”

Chris said, “Bruises heal. It'll be too late.” he lit a smoke, “I'm kicking Garland's ass. He hangs out with Richie. I see him more than Cathy.” Chris, Eyeball and the rest of Ace's gang called Christopher _Garland_. It was easier to separate and after days of _( Chris? Chris who? - Which Chris? Chambers or Dollanganger? ),_ they decided on a nickname. ( His middle name. )

“She kissed me,” I admitted. At first, I didn't want to expose that. I wanted to hold onto it like a personal religious experience. But I understood what Chris felt the day Cathy took hold of his knee, I never felt something like it again, it was pure, chaste but it left a deep impression on me. Years after, sometimes I still hope for the smell of rain, the taste of dust on the lips of faces that sometimes change into hers.

“What was it like,” Chris's voice was strained. Jealous, maybe. No, girls never came between us. Not even Cathy – not even this girl-crazed pillowy, pink, hazy, humid year had driven us apart. They used to be sweet, not boyfriend – girlfriend sweet, little kid sweet. Cathy'd hold his hand on the bus, slick into the back with him, where the bad kids sat, followed him up to the tree-house after they'd met in the lake. When she wasn't around Chris would insist it annoyed him, at that age girls were still gross and ugly, but when she came around – he didn't look annoyed. He was just as sweet on her, maybe he even loved her.

“Sad. She asked me not to hate her, I said I didn't – that none of us did, then she kissed me.”

“I wanna help her, man. I really do.”

“She's haunting us,” I said. “She's like a poltergeist. She doesn't know how to ask for help – so she acts up for attention, only we didn't understand.”

“Life man,” Chris muttered than shook his head.

( The next part was given to me, eye witness from Chris. I'll try to sum up what happened, best as I can from memory. )

As it turned out, Chris really did see Garland more than he saw Cathy. He'd show up at his shack, smile, charm his mom and little sister, ask for Richie, then pound bottles in the back or hack off with Ace. Garland was handsome, he had a doll face, unmarred by time or fights – which he got into often, no scars no imperfections. ( One small nip on the top lip, he got when a bottle smashed him, he swears. )

Mrs. Chambers didn't answer the door, Chris did. Face to face with Garland he says he felt sick. ( like angry sick, man. He told me. I saw him and saw red, I felt sick all over. ) He wanted to lunge at him, throttle out of him what he did to Cathy, but he didn't. An eerie calmness came over him, he told me. Like everything shut down inside him.

“Can I help you?” He asked.

“I'm here to see Eyeball.”

Eyeball wasn't home. He already left with Ace, told Chris if Garland showed up – to tell him they were at the usual spot. “Outback,” Chris told him. “He's outback.”

( I followed him. I was so calm but so mad. I never felt that before, not even for Ray Brower. ) Chris told me later. ( I don't know why I did it, man. He was about six-foot. He was a line-backer, but he was a pussy. Anyone who did what he did to Cathy, to any girl was pussy. ) They were almost around the house, Chris said. When he jumped him.

( I got him on his belly. I had him by the hair and I slammed his face into the dirt. We flipped a few times and he got a few good hits in, my eye was swollen for a week, but I had better hits. I think I must have opened his nose man, it was all blood.

Fuck you, Garland kept saying. Fuck you, Chambers.

Eat shit, Chris told him. Eat shit. Touch her again and eat shit, Dollanganger. )

He said after that, Garland when motionless, like a lizard. That's only why he stopped hitting on him. The anger had subsided, the calm was gone, it was pure adrenaline now. Chris insists he would've kept pounding him – but Garland got up and walked away, not even holding his nose.

( It was eerie man. He looked scared like I knew something. I didn't say Cathy's name, but he knew who I meant, I think. I was scared too, scared he'd bring Richie home – but he didn't. Nothing happened after that. I kept seeing Garland around the house but he didn't even act like I wailed on him. It was fucking blown. )

A few days after, he saw Cathy. She was smoking behind the Blue Point Diner with a few other girls who were in a bad way. Cathy didn't look like she belonged there, Chris said. Those girls had on boots and jeans, she was in a yellow dress with heels – she's something man. She saw him and watched him for a moment, Chris watched her back.

She looked like a real lady. Someone who really came from up on the hill, but, she put her smoke out on the bottom of her white heel like it was a workshop boot. She was different. She clicked-clacked her way across the pavement to him, ( In school, she'd lookout for people she knew before she talked to me – if she talked to me. Not this time, only watched for cars. )

“You beat up my brother,” she said when she got to him. “That's solid.”

( She didn't know slang. I think she thought she did, but she really didn't. )

“Maybe I did,” Chris said. “Maybe I didn't.”

She smiled. She had lipstick on her top tooth but it didn't diminish her guileless looks. Too pretty for a shithole like Castle Rock. “I know you did. My mom had a fit, he had to get seven stitches. Says he fell playing ball. He told me you did it – for Sarah.”

( I didn't know Sarah. I guess that's who he was going with, but that might have been a serve. The look he gave me, he knew who I meant. Sarah was a serve. ) I asked him what he said, but Chris only shrugged. ( How could I explain to her that we'd been swapping stories and buzzing about her? I could say I did it for her, but then how would I know what she told you? )

“Say he's gonna get me back?” Chris asked.

“No way, he's too chicken. I hope you steal Sarah from him,” she nudged him, laughing. “she's too pretty for him. Fuck him.”

( She laughed. But her eyes looked lonely, almost hurt. I wanted to tell her it was for her, I did it for her. How could I Gordo? How could I tell her it was for her. )

“ Fuck him,” Chris agreed, slipping a smoke between his lips. “Solid.”

( I thought she'd walk away, but she didn't. She stood there like she wanted to say something, but didn't know how to start. She kinda nudged my hand, like she wanted to hold it, I woulda let her man. But she didn't, she just touched my eye, the one Garland swolle, and kinda smiled – like she knew. I hope she knew. )

( Then what? )

( Thunderjugs came out and saw us, she yelled out _you two kids been necking back here?_ and then we bolted. Cathy ran toward the hillside of town and I ran toward mine. )

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote when I didn't have wifi but a large collection of books, and one, very dated, thesaurus to draw from. It doesn't have have much of a backstory beyond that I love both the works of VC Andrews and Mr. King. I have no plans of current to post anymore about this but I may, in future add something more to it. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed.


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